Warner Bros. Studio Hollywood Celebrates 100 Years; Is Niagara Falls a Tourist Trap

My travel notebook today touches on a major anniversary for a big-time Hollywood studio, a potential WestJet pilots strike vote and a call for more tourism workers in Canada. I also have some thoughts about whether popular places such as Niagara Falls should be called “tourist traps.”

THAT’S NOT ALL FOLKS: WARNER BROS. CELEBRATES A HUNDRED YEARS 

The studio that brought us Bugs Bunny, Casablanca, Batman, Friends, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, The Wizard of Oz and Big Bang Theory is celebrating a special anniversary TODAY.

It was on April 4, 1923 that a group of four brothers, Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner, opened a film studio a few miles north of Hollywood. Jewish immigrants from Poland, the brothers established themselves as one of the biggest names in the history of entertainment.

Today you can get a glimpse of movie and television magic by taking the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in Burbank, California (only a few feet outside the L.A. city border). Today also marks the precise day in 1923 that the studio was opened, and I was told there will be a big party today with a lot of celebrities.

I was in Los Angeles this past weekend and took the studio tour on Saturday afternoon.

We had a fun, hour-long guided tour of the backlots with a great tour guide named Mark, who showed us around the 110-acre lot, which we were told is still one of the busiest working studios in Hollywood.

Mark showed us city sets that were made to look like New York or Chicago, and were used in everything from The West Wing to The Dark Knight and Friends. One of the sets was done up to look like Latham, New York for the final episode of Seinfeld.

The buildings are all covered with something called styrene, which is easy to repaint so they can make it look different from one filming day to another. They also can add new layers of styrene, or even replace door knobs to change things up, we were told.

Mark showed us the fire escape that was used for the famous cover of Prince’s Purple Rain album, as well as one used by Spiderman. Another backlot looks like a New England village and was used to film everything from Ocean’s Eleven to The Waltons and Gilmore Girls. I took the studio tour several years ago and watched a pair of young women from Brazil positively swoon over the Gilmore Girls buildings.

We also passed by sets used in Blade Runner, Casablanca and La La Land.

Mark also took pictures of tour guests sitting on the famous sofa from Friends, which you can find placed in front of an outdoor fountain used in the opening credits of the show.

After our tour we had a chance to grab a snack or a coffee at Central Perks (also from Friends) and check out displays centred on Warner Bros. superheroes such as Batman and Superman, as well as mix potions in a Harry Potter apothecary, don a Harry Potter hat, and check out memorabilia from My Fair Lady and Game of Thrones, which shows a pretty wide range of entertainment styles.

Of course, there’s also a gift shop where you can buy all sorts of Warner Bros. merchandise to fill up your suitcase for the trip home.

The guided one-hour tour is $69 USD, but you can linger for quite a while at Central Perk, the Superheroes display and the Harry Potter exhibit.

(As an aside, it should be known to Canadians that the family, originally known as Eichelbaum and not Warner, moved from Baltimore to London, Ontario in the 1890s. Jack Warner was born in London, but the family only lived in the city for two years before returning to the U.S.)

IS NIAGARA FALLS A TOURIST TRAP? ONLY IF YOU WANT IT TO BE

 

There’s been a lot of coverage in the past few days about Niagara Falls, Ontario, after a company I’d never heard of, Casago, rated Niagara Falls as a major tourist trap.

CTV News, which is usually very reliable, said the company rated Niagara Falls as the seventh biggest tourist trap in the world. But that is not correct. If you go to the website for Casago and check out the top 10, there’s no mention of Niagara Falls.

I couldn’t find the ENTIRE list for the world, but Casago rated destinations by how many times the phrase “tourist trap” is mentioned in Trip Advisor reviews.

The worst in the world was Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, with 1,049 mentions. Tenth in the world was the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, Ireland, with 516 mentions. Also on the list were Las Ramblas in Barcelona, Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin and The Royal Mile in Edinburgh.

Niagara Falls had 475 mentions and was not in the top ten. Now, 475 is still a lot of mentions. One Trip Advisor critic noted that there seemed to be a gift shop outside every Niagara Falls attraction he or she visited.

But that also is simply not true. If you take a walk along the pedestrian pathway that lines the falls, it’s entirely your choice if you want to go into a gift shop. If you take a hike through the awesome Niagara Glen, I don’t think you’ll pass a gift shop.

Will you if you take the famous “Journey Behind the Falls” or the even more famous Niagara City Cruises boat trip to the base of the falls? I think so. But so what? Is anyone forcing you to buy a “I survived Niagara Falls t-shirt” or a Niagara Falls snow globe? No, they’re not.

I’d prefer not to “exit through the gift shop,” but it’s only a problem if you’re unable to control your spending.

Looking down the list of worldwide tourist traps, I note that the top places mentioned are all very popular places that people love to visit. And why is that? Because they’re fun.

There’s a reason places like Disneyland or Las Ramblas in Barcelona become popular, or the Plaka in Athens or The Great Wall of China. It’s because they’re special places. Are they sometimes overrun with tourists? Yes, they are. But most people dream of visiting those places, many of them for decades. I don’t think many of them care that they’re surrounded by thousands of like-minded dreamers. In fact, I think a lot of people ENJOY that sort of thing.

As a travel writer, I like to encourage people to get off the proverbial beaten track. But I would never label a place a tourist trap, because to me it smacks of elitism.

If people want to go to Fisherman’s Wharf and take photos of orange-pink crabs on a bed of ice, more power to them. If they want to down a pint at the rooftop of the Guinness Storehouse, which I did with my wife in 2010, let them enjoy it.

CANADA SEEKS TOURISM WORKERS

 

Travel is rebounding from the COVID pandemic more quickly than expected, with widespread global interest in experiencing all that Canada has to offer, but Canadian tourism businesses are operating with more than 100,000 fewer workers than they were in 2019. Tourism HR Canada just launched a new campaign, Discover Tourism, that aims to close that gap and encourage further growth and recovery across Canada’s tourism sector. “The updated Discover Tourism brand and the new resources we’ve built are essential tools to help the tourism sector recover. It invites workers and businesses across the country to make the journey in tourism with us,” says Philip Mondor, president and CEO of Tourism HR Canada. “Tourism is a big and ever-changing industry in Canada. We want to make sure we’re connecting visitors with the best experiences possible, and that comes through the incredible people in, and joining, the industry.” As a multi-billion-dollar industry, tourism will continue to expand and change in the coming years, with full recovery of tourism spending expected in 2024. A vital economic driver, this sector is a key employer for over two million Canadians, with 1 in 10 jobs across the country related to tourism in 2019. This project, funded by the Government of Canada’s Tourism Relief Fund, leads and connects the industry in that recovery and growth. “With international and local travel increasing, this is the perfect time to invest further in the tourism sector,” says Beth Potter, president and CEO of Tourism Industry Association of Canada. “And it’s incredible how the industry has changed and how careers and opportunities have evolved. There’s greater flexibility, adventure, fun. Discover Tourism is poised to be the hub for anyone looking to continue or start their career in tourism, and we’re excited to be a part of it.”

WESTJET PILOTS STRIKE VOTE?

 

Yahoo reports that the union representing pilots at WestJet Airlines plans to hold a strike authorization vote as contract talks with management stall.

The Air Line Pilots Association said a strike vote could be held as early as this week, and that its 1,600 members are frustrated after six months of collective bargaining failed to produce a new contract.

The outstanding issues include increased wages, scheduling, and work conditions at WestJet and its discount subsidiary Swoop, Yahoo stated.